Elegy
by sing-oldsongs
Summary: Remus wrote poetry. Sirius finds it. Dinner is burned, dishes are rattled, the ceiling has mysterious stains, and Remus quotes John Donne. Sirius x Remus. OotP-era.
**A/N:** Written in 2009. As the summary suggests, Remus's quote "Oh my America! my new found land!" comes from a poem by John Donne.

 **x**

After Sirius was sent to prison, Remus started writing poetry, slight verses that he did not show to anyone. Now Sirius is sitting cross legged and hunched on the floor; he reads Remus's careful rhythms in a whisper, just under his breath, and he laughs.

Sirius's laugh has changed in the years since they last lived together. Sirius has changed. He wanders through the house now wearing the old robes his mother bought for him, after he ran away and when she thought he might still come groveling back, those breath-held days before she stabbed out her cigarette on his name. The robes come from the seventies, out of date and musty from the closets in which they have been stored, and they sit awkwardly on Sirius's frame. How thin it has become, while he was away.

Away—this is how Remus has come to think of it. He lies on the bed with all of his clothes on and only his shoes kicked to the floor and wiggles his toe through the hole in his sock. Sirius has been away, as if he were on some long vacation or trip around the world. Sirius doesn't talk about Azkaban much.

When he came to Remus, those still windless days at the beginning of summer, they were gentle with each other, and careful. They touched and pulled back. Smiled and pulled back as if they'd been burned. Lay on the bed because they felt too old for the floor and asked each other questions and told secrets, where they still had them. But Remus did not ask about the cell or the dark. Sirius did not ask about the days without food, the years without magic, the other men and all the reasons they left. For hours, they sank into silence, the touch of a hand or a shoulder or a leg, of skin on skin after so long, a crushing weight through which they could barely breathe.

These last weeks, Sirius has picked up smoking again, stealing Remus's cigarettes, sitting at the kitchen table and tearing the empty packages into thin paper strips. When he climbs up the stairs or wanders down the hallways, he bangs his knuckles against the walls. He has no rhythm. In the morning Remus wakes up to the sounds of slamming doors and the clanging of metal hangers pushed roughly aside.

Remus fixes his gaze on the hole he is slowly worrying larger in the toe of his sock. For a few years he would bother with sewing, with patches, with fixing himself up but it's been a while. He would start again for Sirius, if Sirius asked, if Sirius cared, if Sirius had any need for a smart, put together dandy of a boyfriend like the one he himself used to be, but he just rattles around in this house in his musty old robes, brushing ash off his sleeves, refusing to cut his hair. Remus does not let himself slide so much as he lets himself remain, crumpled at the bottom of the slope.

His suitcase is open on the floor and he's letting Sirius paw through it as if he had no more secrets worth keeping. Closes his eyes, contemplates if this is true. It is Sirius's laugh that wakens him—an ugly, parched, grating hack. He is just in time to meet Sirius's eyes, his raised eyebrows so mocking, how he holds the old parchment upright between two fingers. "Didn't know you were a poet, Moony," he says.

"Lot of things you don't know," he answers. What else can he say, hands behind his head, stretching himself out longer, the tight hard ball of his stomach clenching up inside him telling him to stop breathing, a prickling sensation on his skin—what other answer to give?

Twenty years ago Sirius would have read the verses outloud. He would have performed them in costume if so appropriate, standing on a bed in his clunking Muggle boots, loud to summon anyone he could. But twenty years ago he was a child, not capable of the cruelty he knows now. Yes, that is what he has become, cruel, Remus thinks calmly, as Sirius's face contorts into an ugly smile, and he reads the lines again, silent, to himself.

"Not impressed," he decrees finally, and throws the paper down.

He's at the doorway. Remus measures his footsteps carefully. His arm is over his eyes and he's staring into the dark hollow of his inner elbow. He's thinking about when Sirius found him. Lie low. How easy it was, compared to this slow drowning, to take him in again. "They were about you," he says. As if maybe Sirius hadn't guessed.

 **x**

Sirius holes himself up in the kitchen, making dinner like a Muggle. Remus stays upstairs. Carefully, he puts the scattered papers back and doesn't read them, afraid to remember the crushing despair, the paralyzing fear that lead him desperately to a Muggle pen and torn school parchment, afraid even more to know what Sirius has learned of him. Things he doesn't know about himself anymore. Trapped now banging around Sirius's contorted brain.

He had offered Sirius the bed and said he would take the couch. At first there had been a great gust of emotion, the sight of him again after those months, the news delivered in that guttering whisper, that battering fear threatening to burst his heart, but by the evening they had calmed. The blinds closed against the settling dark of the night. Candles and lamps lit and misformed shadows climbing up the walls. "Really, it's okay," he'd added, and then regretted it. He had meant to sound nonchalant, as if he were stating the obvious only.

"I'm not kicking you out of your bed," Sirius answered simply. But he didn't offer to take the couch either. And did Remus think that nothing would happen? A long time but it didn't feel like kissing a stranger, touching a stranger. With Sirius, he let himself close his eyes.

Remus considers burning the papers—when he dies he wishes only that there will be no remnants left, no reminders—but instead he shoves them deep in the inner pocket of his old winter jacket and buries it back in the suitcase.

On the stairs he finds himself wishing fervently to be fifteen again. Mrs. Black is staring at him through the curtain over her portrait. A crinkled old crone, ugly and gnarled within herself, shopping for expensive robes that she brings back to her husband's cavernous mansion, as if this would somehow draw her rebellious son back home. Remus has a hard time believing she would have taken him back if he'd asked, even begging on his knees. Clasped hands and everything. Mother forgive me. I'm a Gryffindor and a Marauder and a fag. I don't believe in blood purity, and I'm sleeping with a halfblood werewolf. But I want to be your son again.

The door to the kitchen bursts open before Remus can touch the handle. Sirius pushes himself out and closes the door behind him on a curl of acrid black smoke. "I seem to have burned dinner," he says.

"Never cook when you're angry," Remus answers evenly.

"Today's lesson learned," Sirius says and then stands stiffly, waiting for Remus to do something.

He gets them takeout and they eat it sitting cross legged on the bed of one of the newly cleaned guest rooms, spilling crumbs like children, beyond caring about a bit of mess. This is how they used to eat when they first lived together, after they left school, legs stretched out in front of them on the floor, odd meals at odd hours, long naps in the afternoon, never sure where they'd be at three or four in the morning when a bludgeon of fatigue or a slash of hunger hit. Later, they were often too scared to speak, but in the beginning, those first months, their conversations were animated. Things said that neither intended to say.

"Didn't know I fucked you up like that," Sirius says finally.

Remus has food in his mouth and this is his excuse for not answering. He swallows and takes another bite. Then he says, "I thought you thought my poetry was funny."

"It is. Bloody fucking hilarious. Next time I'm in a foul mood I'll pick it up and read some and it will give me a good laugh." He uncurls his body, stands, and sets his empty plate on the bedside table. Still standing, as if contemplating whether or not he should pick the plate up again and smash it on the floor, he adds, "You sounded suicidal."

"Maybe it was just a persona," Remus says to his fork. He can feel Sirius's eyes on him now, an uncomfortable gaze. Sirius is, was once, the only person Remus has ever been able to look in the eye.

"You're not capable of a persona. Moony, my big raw nerve." He doesn't stress the posessive, but he gives Remus's shoulder an overly sharp poke.

"Don't."

"Sorry."

Remus reaches around Sirius, still not quite looking at him, and stacks his plate precariously on top of Sirius's. He draws out the utensils and lays them on the top plate. Then he sighs and lies down on the bed on his back. The ceiling is grimy with mysterious stains.

Sirius is still standing a bit off to the side, still staring; now he barks out, "You should have _said_ something," and slams his hand on the table so that the dishes rattle.

"And when would have been a good time for that conversation, hmmmm?" Remus asks calmly. "When you were in prison?"

He wants it to hurt Sirius but it doesn't seem to, and later he will wonder if Sirius's years in Azkaban are not, and never were, to him the sort of disgraceful hidden pain that they are to Remus. If to Sirius Azkaban was simply something that happened, unfair and cruel, scarring and unforgivable, but there, throbbing and ugly in the harsh brightness of day for everyone to see and remember. In Sirius's heart, he sees now, there exists no dark prison, as there exists so painfully in his.

"How about all the weeks we've lived here together in this rotten old house?" Sirius snaps instead. He starts to shake Remus's shoulder. "Look at me, you foul old wolf!"

In the last months of the war, Remus was both scared of Sirius and, it seemed, always angry at him for the smallest or the biggest things. He couldn't stand to look at him, to hear his voice or to speak to him. He found himself, desperate and out of character, distracting Sirius with kisses, with late summer sex on the couch or in the kitchen. The only thing he could think of to make them feel closer again. Yes I used to love this man. Yes this is why I loved him. Forget the way he watches me across the table. Forget that tone of his voice—

Remus turns his gaze to Sirius again. The wrinkles that have crept over his face. The gray that has slipped into his hair. Some undescribable manic quality that has come into his movements, his posture, his stance, so easy to understand how the world could believe he was insane.

"Foul old wolf?" Remus whispers. "Crazy old convict."

Sirius steps away and exhales, exasperated. What did he want, Remus wonders, bringing up those verses again, yelling at Remus for keeping the most obvious secrets? As if he expected to come home and see everything just the way he had left it, right down to trusty old Moony, stoic and quietly smiling through the twisting of his bones, no more scars than the ones criss-crossing his skin. He would be disgusted but for the stoop of Sirius's shoulders.

"I have never felt farther away from you," Sirius says finally, and walks out of the room before Remus can answer.

 **x**

Remus was an undiscovered land. A dry stretching desert, an unexpected region of mountains, footpaths once worn into the ground and now strangled with overgrown weeds. Sirius, an explorer. Lying low, low, low, uncovering the hidden, discovering the unknown. What an expert he'd felt, and so secure in his knowledge, drowning everywhere else, here safe on the land.

When he tells Remus this, lying more shadow than substance in the dusty light before sunset, Remus laughs. He knows he shouldn't, but he does not even try to stop himself. He laughs a long and hollow laugh, while Sirius lies next to him smoking Remus's last cigarette, honest in his thievery. Then Remus calms and there is silence.

"Oh my America!" he says finally, "my new found land! The body as landscape—it's quite overdone and always a bit laughable, you know, Sirius."

"I was only trying to explain," Sirius says, but stops as if against a wall. He sinks his teeth into his own bottom lip. "Who is the cruel one now, Moony?" he asks, a casual surface, a bite underneath.

Sirius is staring straight ahead so Remus feels safe in examining his profile. His gaze traces down Sirius's forehead, the slope of his nose, the two ridges of his lips. This body, at least, he knew. This ghost that haunted him, this spirit he summoned with his pen. Always in his visions a young man appeared, solemn and stubborn, hands in his pockets, scowl on his face. It's amazing how he can see this man still, in the weak bones sprawled next to him. How something in his stillness, in his breathing, remains familiar. How maybe in the darkness it is as if he hasn't changed at all.


End file.
